Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday November 25, 2011 @06:41PM
from the not-in-fact-all-about-the-benjamins dept.

New submitter silentbrad writes with a followup to our discussion this morning about Ubisoft's claims of overwhelming game piracy. An article at IGN quotes a different point of view from Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve:
"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the U.S. release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty."
The quote was taken from an interview at The Cambridge Student Online, in which Newell speaks to a few other subjects, such as creating games for multiple platforms and e-sports.

If they tried to block "games aren't allowed to be unlocked at different times in different regions", all the publishers have to do is consider Steam the "last region" - not putting their games on Steam until it's made its worldwide launch. It's too simple to get around in a way that's bad for Steam.

And Valve isn't responsible for enforcing their ethical practices on others. I'm sure they're happy to take a cut of anyone's money.

You're right it's not their responsibility to do that. But not for the reason that you think, they've unleashed this pox upon the gaming community, but it isn't their responsibility because their responsibility is purely to the shareholders.

Just like how there's no guarantee that they won't at some future time take everybody's games away or require a subscription to access them.

Corporate suicide is not in the best interest of the shareholders. And if you read the article, (Asking a lot I know) you will find Gabe saying that actually serving your customers IS in the best interest of the shareholders.

Except Valve is privately owned. Sure, there are private shareholders, but at this point in the life of Valve most of the limited partner shareholders would have been bought out ages ago, meaning that the owners are also the managers.

An LLC is absolutely NOT an S-Corp... unless you want it to be (and specifically notify the IRS that you want it to be). There are a LOT of restrictions on S-Corps (no foreign owners, only one class of stock, no more than 75 shareholders, etc) so it's highly unlikely that a corporation the size of Valve is an S-Corp..

The vast majority of LLCs are treated as either sole proprietorships or partnerships for tax purposes.

The important part is that the type of company you incorporate as at the state level doesn

Just like how there's no guarantee that they won't at some future time take everybody's games away or require a subscription to access them.

Duh, yes, there is. As annoying as they are, ToS, EULA, purchase agreements, etc go both ways. And the way Steam's is worded, along with applicable laws, means they would have to either make the game available for download without Steam DRM, or refund you the purchase price.

Short of going out of business in a spectacular fashion (which is always a risk with an online

Duh, yes, there is. As annoying as they are, ToS, EULA, purchase agreements, etc go both ways. And the way Steam's is worded, along with applicable laws, means they would have to either make the game available for download without Steam DRM, or refund you the purchase price.

False. Whoever modded you up clearly has never read the TOS, but you're wrong. (As far as the 'applicable laws' part, such laws would be rather pro-consumer, so I can only assume they don't apply here in the 'States)

There's nothing in the Steam TOS about refunds (other than several mentions of things being NON refundable) for one-time game purchases (as opposed to subscriptions) if they cancel you. And if they do, whether or not they give you access to a stand-alone copy is at their option. There is nothing in the TOS that requires them to.

C. Termination by Valve.

1. In the case of a recurring payment Subscription (e.g., a monthly subscription), in the event that Valve terminates or cancels your Account or a particular Subscription for convenience, Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide a prorated refund of any prepaid Subscription fees paid to Valve.2. In the case of a one-time purchase of a product license (e.g., purchase of a single game) from Valve, Valve may choose to terminate or cancel your Subscription in its entirety or may terminate or cancel only a portion of the Subscription (e.g., access to the software via Steam) and Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide access (for a limited period of time) to the download of a stand-alone version of the software and content associated with such one-time purchase.

So no, there's nothing there says that they HAVE to do anything. And that's why, regardless of the wicked sales and the growing temptation, I've still not bought anything off of Steam, and won't do so.

Once you download any game from Steam, I'm fairly sure that the client can't go in and delete it from your computer later. Even so, set up SyncToy to backup the Steam folders to another directory; you can play almost any game from Steam without Steam itself running.

Yes it can. Like recently when the DiRT 3 promotional game codes got leaked from that ATI affiliate site; Valve revoked all of the DIRT 3 promotional keys, uninstalled the games, and required legit ATI hardware owners to scan proof of purchases.

1) they *are* obligated to in many states by law (CA one of those so I couldn't care less)

2) even in those they aren't they'd be hard pressed to win a class action lawsuit against them.

But it's mostly irrelevant - Valve/Steam is NOT out to get you, they are just a company distributing games. They don't want to go out of business any more than than their customers want them to, and based on their current success sounds like both parties are pretty happy so far.

Let's say that they run into financial trouble, and enter bankruptcy. Would the bankruptcy administrator allow them to do that if it weren't an obligation? (Even if it WERE an obligation, purchasers of games would likely be classed as a lower class of creditor than others.)

Little hint... stop putting your steam folder on your c:\ drive. I've had literally the same steam folder since steam was in beta and only came with Counter Strike. It doesn't bitch much, it just spends a bit of time updating and it's happy as a panda. I have this 50gb folder with pretty much all the games from steam I want, and it transfers between any windows computer more or less without issue.

I really can't understand what the problem with steam is? I have a bookshelf full of game boxes with discs in them. And I have a folder on my computer with ISO copies and cracks for nearly all of them. Because the boxed version kinda sucks more often than not, and if it doesn't have a significant multiplayer section, there is no reason to subject my computer to the publishers DRM wimzy. Steam on the other hand, doesn't give me a pretty box, but it also makes taking my games with me easy. It's a trade off I'm willing to accept as long as Valve sticks to their word and keeps the service up, refunds my money, or releases drm free copies. They have so far.

This is not true (although it is closer to true than the original poster who thought that a privately held company would automatically not have shareholders), some companies are sole proprietorships and some other companies are partnerships. That being said, ALL corporations have stock holders and Valve is a corporation.

Whoever brainwashed you with this "purely to the shareholders" junk knows nothing about running a real business. Some CEOs with short term interests (eg. they'll get their bonus and move on to destroy the next business) think this works (for them), but smart business people know that anything you try to do that DIRECTLY benefits the shareholders short-term invariably hurts them long-term, and that you're best off focusing on production and customers (supply and demand), and letting the stock price benefit flow on naturally.

On the other hand I almost exclusively purchase games through Steam and a few of my friends are the same way. If a publisher such as EA pulls their games from Steam they are potentially removing a large part of their market. Steam has a lot of momentum with their large gaming library, constant game sales, and community. Systems like Origin, Impulse, etc, don't have the same draw.

I used to play lots of pirated games, and I mean LOTS of them, but.. a few years back I got introduced to Steam. I don't remember anymore what exactly drove me to try it, but I did. And suddenly I noticed using less and less pirated games to the point that I haven't had a single pirated game on any of my computers for a few years now. Steam just happens to be so extraordinarily convenient, not to mention two things they provide me with that pirated games don't: always up-to-date installations, and I don't have to bother with backups of my own or trying to keep the original discs safe. And again, the constant sales thing is also great; if I can just stay patient and wait for the game I like to come on this or that seasonal sale I'll be able to safe quite a bit, but I also can just rush out and buy it the moment it's available if I just can't stay patient.

My roomie has a very similar story in fact, we're both old "pirates"; we never produced any pirated copies ourselves nor did we spread them around, but we did use them ourselves a lot. And when we learned of Steam we both started using pirated games less and less until we eventually stopped altogether. In other words, whatever Steam is doing, it seems to be working.

Now, as for the "competing" services, like e.g. the one you're required to sign to when you buy BF3... well, we both view them as an inconvenience, not a convenience. They do not offer anything that Steam already doesn't, plus they're handicapped in several ways, like only offering games from one, single publisher. I understand that they want a piece of the Steam-cake, but the way they're going about it is simply not working all that well.

Rather than steam, consider this might be age, and wisdom. A few years ago before even steam came up I stopped pirating because it was not worth the hassle. Ah , who am I kidding, in my case it was probably only age.

Not to mention Steam gives the publisher a HELL of a lot of eyeballs to plug their game to. i know that thanks to Steam sales, which Steam nicely pops up in a little box to tell me about, i have bought more games in 6 months than I had in the 4 years before I started using Steam. didn't they say L4D had something like a 1740% increase in profits thanks to one of their crazy Steam sales? That is a LOT of money to leave on the table because Mr Publisher wants to be a douchenozzle.

Personally I can't really see myself shopping with anyone other than Steam and GOG anymore. once in a blue moon i'll pick one up at Amazon, just to round out the purchase for supersaver usually, but being able to just push a button and have the game is just too damned easy. Now that my boys are using steam too I won't even have to deal with any crazy Xmas running around as we'll just wait until the big Xmas sale and I'll just gift them the games they like.

So I agree the network effect means I just won't deal with crap like Origin. with Steam my friends are there, my family is there, its easy to chat and join a game, why would I want a bunch of different services? The only reason i still shop at GOG is that there is no stupid service and i get a DRM free.exe instead of dealing with the crap. They can keep origin, impulse, D2D, I'm just not interested. if it isn't on Steam? its not like there aren't a bazillion other game publishers with cool games I can spend my money on.

now we have origin. which sucks, but we can't play BF3 without it... Steam is losing customers at a slow trickle.

I doubt they are too worried. I generally won't use a game if it uses a different store than Steam anymore, it isn't worth the hassle or bloat. 90% of the games on my computer are on/through Steam, so convenience takes a large dip when I have to install another full store/distribution service just to play a single game. I'm guessing I'm not alone in this, there has to be a demographic separate from the "gotta have it now" crowd. I had a couple games through Impulse (pre-Gamestop, now I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole), and I found myself ignoring them completely since they weren't as available as Steam.

I also stick with Steam for their insane and frequent sales, and their growing support for games in the various Humble Bundles. Its shocking the amount of cash I've split on random Steam impulse buys.

As for EA, I can live without them, though I find it sad what they've done to places like Bioware (used to be one of my favorite studios, but Dragon Age 2 pretty much killed that).

I know someone here is going to yell at me for supporting DRM... I can live with it. Gabe has a point, the value added bit that Steam has keeps me from caring too much. Steam actually manages to add value to my purchases, while keeping publishers happy with control. No, Steam isn't perfect, and yes, Steam annoys the hell out of me from time to time. But the future is DRM (love it or hate it) and digital distribution, and I'd rather have Steam leading the pack than EA, or Microsoft, Valve at least compromises between DRM and their users wants/needs/happiness, as opposed to the others who would love to eat your rights for dinner, with your enjoyment and experience as a nice after-dinner mint.

I also stick with Steam for their insane and frequent sales, and their growing support for games in the various Humble Bundles. Its shocking the amount of cash I've split on random Steam impulse buys

This is a good reason to stick with Steam, and a good chunk of the reason why I refuse to go elsewhere anymore. The remainder had to so with the availability of indie games. Let's face it, there are a lot of indie developers who sell games through Steam and sometimes Steam alone.

Origin? No thanks, not with its horribly invasive nature, and the fact that it's an EA product. Screw that.

I'd like to see the poster you were replying to show statistics backing up his claim that Steam is losing customers in a "slow trickle," but I think he's simply repeating what he's been told. If anything, Steam is probably gaining sales. Every holiday, I buy up a bunch of game packs for family and friends as virtual stocking stuffers. I know I'm not alone.

I know that it stands for "company" [irs.gov]. Were you under the mistaken impression it stood for "corporation"? They are similar to corporations, but are not one. They can be file taxes as one if they choose to, but it is not their only option.

For Star* and SecuROM, they do have relatively significant notices that "this game has additional DRM". Not a huge "DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNLESS YOU LIKE DRM", but it's there next to whether it has multiplayer and what languages it supports. They don't seem to do this for GFWL, probably because they don't consider that DRM. It's annoying, no argument there, but I've played several GFWL games without making a Live account.

Which is why it is funny that he says it is not a pricing problem. It most certainly is.

While he is correct that DRM, when logically and rationally evaluated from the perspective of the informed consumer, severely diminishes the value of the product, he fails to compare the cost and availability of the product.

Lack of availability will certainly, and quite obviously, push consumers to alternate distribution channels (piracy), but price will push them there regardless.

I have often wondered, "Just who the fuck are they selling this shit too?". I just don't see their demographics having that much disposable income, especially now, and they are pricing themselves out of the market.

Honestly, if the price was reasonable, they would sell more volume. A fair amount of technically minded people would opt for the reasonable payment vs. the uncertain download (malware) from predominantly public trackers. Not to mention dodging the legal liability of piracy and the threat of being sued for some ridiculous amount.

I have been a contributor to all the Humble Bundles simply to support that idea that good games (they really are pretty good) can be made and sold without ridiculous prices and hundred million dollar budgets.

Pricing is the primary issue when speaking of piracy. DRM is secondary. Availability is in there, but only because distribution channels have gone full-retard for decades about treating regions differently.

Strange they have not learned anything from the hard lesson in Russia. The entire reason R5 releases exist is because they are forced to sell to Russian markets faster since competition from piracy on the streets is too much for them.

Which is why it is funny that he says it is not a pricing problem. It most certainly is.

While he is correct that DRM, when logically and rationally evaluated from the perspective of the informed consumer, severely diminishes the value of the product, he fails to compare the cost and availability of the product.

It isn't a price problem, it's a value problem. The two are subtly different. Gabe's argument is that availability and intrusive DRM negatively impact the value of the game.

What the industry should be doing is concentrating on ways to make the legit product more attractive than the pirated product - instead they're making it less attractive.

The reason is that multinational retailers, etc set their prices based on an exchange rate at a specific date, and then don't tend to change it based on the fluctuation of currency exchange rates. This is even more obvious for books in North America - most publishers use the same print for US & Canada, and on paperbacks they list MSRP as something like "$9.95 US, $13.95 CA". That was true in about 1990, but it's $1 US : $0.95 CA today!

In 2009, $1 AUS = $0.60 US Today it's almost 1:1. $80-90 AUS for a game that's $60 US wasn't too bad in 2009, but now it *seems* horrible in comparison.

On the up side, the Australian dollar is kicking ass against most foreign currencies right now, so Australian travelers are getting great deals these days.
It's not like there was 40% deflation in the Australian currency, though, so you no one is going to be too sympathetic. Software may be weirdly priced, but other physical imports should be cheaper. Probably not the best for the domestic tourism industry, though...

The biggest issue I have with that argument, is that prices listed in AU via steam *are still listed in USD*. We're not being told to pay AUD $92 for Skyrim. We've being told to pay USD $89.95 vs the price quoted for the US of $59.95.

You can (mostly) blame the supply chain for that one. In order to preserve their business model, distributors and retailers (both online and brick-and-mortar) demand things like region-locking and region-specific pricing to make sure that digital copies or physical copies from other regions are no more appealing than the ones they are distributing. Physical distribution would likely need to be cut completely out of the content delivery model for anything to change, and the chances of that happening in the c

Region locked pricing is a good thing though. I have a copy of HL2 that I bought back when I was living in Thailand (right when it came out), and it cost me about 20€ for the full English version. Retail prices in the USA and Europe were, IIRC, closer to 70-100€/$... There was a Thai-Only version selling for about half that... if this hadn't been the case, no regular Thai would've been able to afford the game.

The same thing applies in, well, pretty much all other third-world regions.

I was about to buy a copy of GTA IV on Steam during the sale they've got going. With credit card in hand, I found out in some reviews that the PC version requires Games for Windows Live for saving and installs SecuROM. Dealbreaker right there and I never purchased.

This is why I think Good Old Games is the true hero in all of this. They have a no compromise policy- if you want to sell games on their site, you have to sell it 100% DRM free (Steam is DRM btw), with a lot of additional free content (like PDF manuals, soundtracks, codes, etc.). You can re download your game as many times as you want, copy it to wherever you want, give it to whomever you want. And with the success of the Witcher and its sequel, they're attracting interest and acquiring more publisher agreements. GoG is the real future, not Steam.

Is Games for Windows Live actually required? My steam account made me create a local profile for the last Batman game, but it was local to my computer. There was no connection to Microsoft's computers. It was actually kinda annoying because it took a few moments for me to figure out why I couldn't play Street Fighter 4 online even though I was signed into GFWL, and then get signed up for an online profile.

For what it's worth, GFWL does an awesome job matching me up with players on SF4. The service does h

Actually no, I'm gonna chime in here as another person who owns Arkham City and does not have a live account. Your statement is incorrect.

What happens instead is, you get prompted to log into GFWL, and can click "cancel" to just work offline. Save game still works, no features lost. You can't do online scores, but who cares, really? Dunno if it'll require a login for DLC, but I rarely bother with that anyway. And, just to be clear on this point, I'm currently a quarter way through the game, have never made a live account (I dislike Microsoft), have saved plenty of times and am playing a non-pirated, bought off of steam version of the game.

I don't know where you got your information, but it's either out of date, was never correct in the first place, or something got misunderstood along the way.

It's not one word, but rather an abbreviation. "FSCK" stands for "File System ChecK" and is the Unix and Unix-like operating systems' equivalent of the old SCANDISK.EXE for Windows. "Boring as fsck" means "as boring as watching the computer make slow progress through a file system check, methodically testing volume structures and clusters and blocks for errors." The fsck routine often requires unmounting a disk to perform maintenance, and the system may not be very interactive, and thus boring for the user, if the main system disk is unmounted. Less computer-literate people picked up this expression, but in a corrupt form, much as children may with error acquire knowledge from superior elders or barbarians may crudely imitate more civilized nations. Thus we find the underclass saying "boring as fuck" instead of "boring as fsck." The proliferation of this error points to a degeneration in society, an apostasy from the golden era in which Slashdotters ruled the world and a fall into one where the zombie-like hordes of HuffPo and FoxNews openly display their ignorance without the shame their ancestors would have rightly felt. You can help reverse that decline, however, and together we can take back our nation and our world, if you promulgate this truthful narrative of history to the more credulous of the savages.

Sorry but the only instances of pirated games I have ever seen (and btw didn't download) were cracked versions of a game that could be downloaded for free. I haven't seen a site offering to sell me someone else's game for a fee. I agree its a matter of convenience in a lot of cases - when something cool is out people want access to it now - but I think it must be a much less common thing that people buy the game from a pirate. I have never associated piracy with a separate sale arrangement, just people who

Sorry but the only instances of pirated games I have ever seen (and btw didn't download) were cracked versions of a game that could be downloaded for free. I haven't seen a site offering to sell me someone else's game for a fee. I agree its a matter of convenience in a lot of cases - when something cool is out people want access to it now - but I think it must be a much less common thing that people buy the game from a pirate. I have never associated piracy with a separate sale arrangement, just people who want something for free, or simply want it where its not available or (as noted by an Aussie above) its grossly overpriced and people feel ripped off.

The pirates charge less than the game companies. The fact that the price is $0.00 doesn't really matter; you're still paying less than if you bought it legally. If I were to make a bunch of copies of a game disc, and go around handing it out to people and paying them $5 (note, *I'm* paying them to "buy" my product), then I'm selling the game at an even lower price than the pirates. Yes, it would be incredibly stupid to do that, but that's not the point; the point is, just because the customer isn't paying doesn't mean they're not sales.
I think Gabe's got it spot-on. In economics terms, the pirates are competition; competition who is selling a better product, more widely available, and cheaper. You can't beat competition like that by crippling your product even further.

here prices are sky right and population's consumption power is not first world, mainly because of taxes that double the game's cost for the consumer. Prices here are not as bad as Australian's as far as I know, but it's the major player into piracy decision making, besides the growing culture of "only dumb people pay for what you can get for free".

Having a service problem doesn't mean there isn't a pircing problem as well. The three biggest issues IMO are pricing, service, and respect, although I'm sure other issues play a role as well. However, the respect problem isn't the 'pirates don't respect intellectual property' garbage, but rather, the lack of respect for customers from copyright holders. The FBI warnings on DVDs being a good example of disrespect that only affects those that actually BUY the product.

The pirates have little cost except servers and bandwidth and every incentive to steal. It's still theft whether you agree or not. There's no debate on that issue. It doesn't matter if you respect intellectual property, when you don't pay for it legitimately, it's theft. You can equivocate all you want. That's your moral hazard and you have to live with yourself. Just don't whine when they arrest you.

So if the DRM in the game f's up my computer or I use something like origin and my account gets banned, so all game that were legitely purchased now are gone. That is the biggest problem with these online services. If your account gets banned all games you bought on there are now gone and there is no way for you to play them or recoup your money.

When the pricing of a software package gets to be too outrageous (not in terms of value but simply compared to how much cash one has on hand), then pricing becomes a significant issue as well. For example, a graphical WYSIWYG HTML editor, a graphics editor, a text layout tool, a math package, etc. each for $400 makes it quite difficult to afford the software. Most people are willing to lay down some sizeable dough for one program but, when you need to lay out $400 for your office package and 10 others each of which will need upgrades for $200 in several years it gets to be an investment that is not very workable.

OTOH, if the same software were available 24/7 for immediate download (with no support unless paid for) for a much reduced price -- say $50, the quantities sold will be much higher and the software company can reduce its costs by eliminating Best Buy and a host of other stores that take 50% off the top anyway. Additionally, there is no packaging, manuals, DVDs, etc. that need to be printed / burned nor shipping. The costs for the software company will go down and their sales will go up. I might be even tempted to try software that I wouldn't ordinarily buy simply because the software is not cost prohibitive.

The Apple Appstore is really a good example of this. Yes, the software is underpriced compared to an office package on your office PC but it does drive home that you don't need to charge $40 for a game and you can do it for a $1.00 instead -- a 40 fold price reduction. Oh, yea, Angry Birds has about 500 Million downloads now.... If Photoshop were $10 - $20 and available for instant download, I suspect that Adobe could make a lot more than they do. Especially when they double charge you by printing the "manual" in book form and then your having to buy it from the Last Bookstore in America.....

Piracy is a natural response to people who want to "CONTROL". The issue is not about IP, its not about getting something for nothing. Time and time again research, the research generated by the very vendors of IP, says people are happy to pay for something of value. That they simply want what they want the way the want it. It is the unbridled need, addiction to, the control of something that has become the crux of the piracy debate.

The irony is, that by punishing consumers for the fear of being robbed, precipitates the actual robbery. People just ask to get their music, movie or game, simply, easily, and accessibly from any technology they possess. It is the draconian measures which now threaten to destroy
(SOPA) the very conduit our collective futures rely on (the Internet), that is a clear extension of the avarice and need to control. These people have enjoyed decades of complete control, allowing an infrastructure of suppliers and middlemen to rape artists at one end and consumers at the other. With the advent of growing technology, old paradigms fail. For these people, the answer is not to learn how to leverage the amazing power of the new technology, but strangle it so they can bring back the bad old days. We need to make it clear to our representatives in no uncertain terms, that the future demands that the internet be free, broad and democratic.

Lots of people avoid buying games entirely because of DRM and low game quality. There are those of us who buy games at extremely deep discounts (5-15$ at most) on steam because of DRM we refuse to pay full price for DRM infested games that we don't own but we do want to support PC developers and have few alternatives since many small developers release on steam.

Gabe has done a lot of marketing to brainwash people and get people to thinking he's a good guy but he's not, if he was the good guy games would deprecate their DRM after a year and the exe's unhooked from steam. The purpose of steam is to datamine users for 'business reasons' and he's putting this massive spin his datamining operation. This means more metrics driven game development as if we didn't have this enough of this alread with the constant clones every year.

Newell said that the "service problems" are the primary problem. He's right.
I will not buy region locked disks precisely because my family lives and works between 3 regions. Region locking is an absolute ripoff, at least for us.

Anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer
Is anything less ever acceptable in this day and age?

Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty."
He's being polite. DRM is mostly a form of defective products and sales fraud.

Price *is* an issue, it needs to be reasonable. But I won't even think about that until *all of the above is out of the way* or your "product" simply doesn't exist to me.

I live in Latin America and have the following options for movies/music/games:

1. Get it on DVD from a pirate (approx cost $1) [ILLEGAL]2. Rent a pirate copy (approx cost $2) [still technically ILLEGAL]3. Buy it on iTunes (cost $1-$4).. but I can only do this because I've figure out how to get around regional limitations [psuedo-LEGAL]4. Buying on Netflix/Amazon is not an option [N/A]5. Going to threater (movies only).. sometimes, when/if it arrives at a timely basis (cost: $4-$5) [LEGAL]6. Buy the legal DVD (cost: $30-$100) [LEGAL]

As you can see a great option is iTunes/Netflix/Amazon but the industry has systematically cut off those options from us. Also the legal DVDs are sold at much higher prices than in the US.

That might not be the fault of the studios as much as of national governments. Brazil and several other Latin American countries have prohibitive import duties for home entertainment products. Vote in a government that gets its revenue from things other than imports.

One of the main reasons I'll download a cracked game is to try it out. Nobody releases demos anymore, and you can't trust reviews with all the goddamned shills out there. I did it for SC2, because I didn't know if it would be my thing. Well, sure enough I liked it, and bought it online the next day.

Case in point: Need For Speed - The Run. I knew it was coming from EA Black Box, responsible for all the "wigger" installments of the NFS franchise. Installed, played for about 10 minutes, deleted. Had I paid $70 for it, I would have put it in a box, shit on it, and Fedexed it to Trip Hawkins' home address with the note "Fixed it for you".

So, yes, Gabe is right, 'service" aka availability is a primary issue, and while price itself is not the most important factor, VALUE is. A staggering majority of major-brand games today lack value. They cost more than they're worth. In that sense, NFS The Run held very little value for me, because it's a shit game produced by a cut-rate studio and certainly does not belong in the same price bracket as, say, Skyrim, Arkham City or even F1 2011.

From my personal experience, I'd say piracy is a pricing AND a service problem. During my student years, I pirated almost every game except a select few I absolutely wanted to have. 50€ was alot of money for me, and downloading something from the internet was more comfortable than getting a copy from a store and sticking the CD in every time I wanted to play. I didn't have Steam back then.

Now I'm using Steam and have a job. I've probably spent around 200-300€ on games this year, taking up many of the special discount offers on Steam, even buying games "legit" that I have pirated CDs lying around. Steam makes it easy, and now that I have the money, I don't think twice about spending 20€ on a game every month or so. From this experience I'd say that piracy has nothing todo with greed, bad intent or trickery. It's just plain lazyness and circumstance. And DRM is a waste of time that only makes things worse for paying customers.

Pricing is part of the service. And pirates have advantage over price, but if they also have advantages over everything else, then they really have everything going for them.

The only downside is guilt of not paying and fear of getting caught. Guilt will make a lot of people with the money to pay as long as they get what they want. Fear will make cowards and the paranoids pay, but then again, no one is really scared of getting caught downloading a game.

I don't pay due to guilt (or fear).. I'm not sure where you got that idea that. The fact is that pirates don't have advantages over everything else. They have the advantage on price, and (in some cases, but not all) on distribution.

The advantages I get from official suppliers of my software produce are generally, in no particular order -

- A far greater likliehood that my software will be free of malware. Sure, it has happened *occasionally* in commercial software, usually due to bad production, but it's far

A far greater likliehood that my software will be free of malware. ...for diverging definitions of malware. I define malware as software that gets installed on my computer without benefit to me and with potentially harmful effects on my machine's integrity, confidentiality or availability. Which is the case for pretty much any form of DRM and hence pretty much the case with every legally bought software.I would also like to see your source for illegally copied software being a noticeable (I won't

Dear publishers, if you put out all this DRM and copy-protection and basically treat me like a criminal, then who am I to argue with you? I'll use The Pirate Bay, because apparently that's what you expect me to do.

If you treat me like a valued customer, then I will be one. There's a shelf full of boxes right next to me proving that I'm quite willing to spend money on games. But I don't enter into business relationships with people who disrespect me. I'd rather respond by disrespecting them as well.

This guy has identified exactly the issue, which seems to elude almost every software company, and music and video publishers too (and an astonishing amount of executives in other fields too): it is all about putting the customer first. When companies put DRM on their product, and other impediments to product satisfaction, they are putting their customer last. The problem is fundamentally one of mistaken priorities at an executive level: sometimes that manifests itself as DRM, sometimes it manifests itself as not putting a superior product out for fear of "cannibalizing" an existing product, sometimes it shows itself in hidden fees and misleading terms. These are all symptoms of the same mistaken priorities.

DRM stops "casual" pirates (pre-crack) and it increases the R&D cost for serious pirates. Take the PS3 for example: it was not cracked until the removal of Other OS. Increasing the cost of legitimate hacking and made the USB solution more attractive to research. I do not say this in support of DRM, but any counter-argument must be honest in order to succeed. DRM works for certain definitions of "works", and that angle must be addressed head-on rather than brushed aside.

You need to correct that. Pirates didn't *bother* to crack the PS3 UNTIL OtherOs was removed. It was then cracked rather easily then after.

I know that. Prior to the removal of OtherOS, the cost to crack the PS3 was higher than the cost to use a supported platform feature. After its removal, cracking became an attractive target (and as you point out, it didn't take long).

I'd say DRM encourages piracy more than anything. I'd rather a game just work, than having to jump through hoops to make it work. If a game has something like Securom, frankly I'd rather pirate than have to deal with it. DRM never works, it will always be cracked. There's no getting around that fact.

In truth I never like pirating, if a company makes a good game I'm of the opinion that they deserve my money, but sometimes they don't make it easy to take. Dreamfall is a noticeable game I remember, I have the boxed copy which uses a disk check, but thankfully there are loads of DRM-free.exe's the pirates have provided.

Except it doesn't discourage piracy at all. It encourages people to break DRM. Sure most people have internet connections, and they are interested in breaking the DRM, they will use that connection to follow the instructions people post online on how to break that DRM.

Let me translate that:Locks on homes prevent people you don't want from coming inDRM prevents people from accessing the content

Only problem is... the content providers WANT people accessing the content. Locks on homes are like having a firewall, patched software and some sort of AV software on your computer... the house would work just well without the security add-ons, and so would your computer. The add-ons make it more secure.

With DRM, the entire idea is to prevent access.

Now, a real counter argument is that if people are grabbing pirated copies of the content, there is nothing to prove that the content is still secure and hasn't been monkeyed with by the pirates, to, say, add botnet software, a keylogger, or something else nefarious.Then again, some of the DRM software includes keylogger and/or botnet-like hooks that the Bad Guys can leverage, so it's probably a wash.

If your home security system only worked when you didn't have a cold, and only worked for some members of your household, or otherwise prevented people with the right to access the home from doing so in an accustomed manner, you'd find that security feature hobbled in some manner pretty quickly. Then you get the appearance of security without the benefit... just like with DRM.

The part you are missing is the part where Ubisoft's DRM servers go down and you CAN'T access the software you paid for. You did not buy a license to use the software whenever you want, you bought a license to use the software whenever they let you. Hence the analogy to an alarm system that locks out both unauthorized and authorized users.

Responding to your point 1: If I go to Walmart and buy a toaster and then get home and find that it only toasts one side of the bread, I can return it. Or if I find that it doesn't fit on my counter, I can return it. If I decide I don't like the color, I can return it. And that's for a $7 toaster (don't buy the $7 toaster, by the way--you get what you pay for, and, no, sadly, even a simple toaster can still be botched up in the 21st century). Now if I buy a $50-60 computer game and get home and find out tha

Yeah it's that point about lack of demo for me. That seems to be the norm now that we have all the "app store" distribution models (iTunes Store, Steam etc). You're supposed to just "know" if a game is any good, that it will work well on your PC properly etc and gamble £30-50 on it. No thanks - if they can't be arsed to make a demo, I'll make my own.

Of course, once you've got a pirated version working it's up to discipline and morals to buy it. I would, but tend to be in the minority (I'm the sort of person who drives the speed limit. Almost no one does that). Maybe writing demos would help reduce it a little, or maybe there's not enough "pirated it for a demo and now I have it I might as well keep it" activity to justify the cost of making one which is their choice.

Check this out.... I played bf2 so seriously and competitively that my clan has won a world championship (TGL 8v8). My clan, including me, has been awaiting bf3 for years. It recently came out, and I still don't own it.... they require you dl and install EA's clone of steam and run it alongsde the game, and then the server browser uses an external web browser...... uhhhh.. no.

I won't accept that trash. Game looks awesome, and I very highly anticipated it (having spent thousands of hours on the predecessors)..... but they're asking too much of me. I will pay an extra $5 on the price if that mde them happy, but in truth they want more from me than I'm willing to give.

Business models aren't even that much of a factor. A trivial case in point -- there are lots of cult TV programs out on DVD in Britain that cannot be obtained anywhere else because of region locking and formatting -- and will never be made available anywhere else. That is not a business model, unless bleeding small markets dry then deliberately killing them is a business model. To me, that's simple perversity.

The US is more... interesting... in that respect. Disney, for example, have released DVDs of some of their US television shows ONLY overseas and not within the US at all (or, when they have, only under extreme pressure and half a decade after everywhere else). Again, what kind of business model is that? It's a blatant attempt to kill a market, which is no business practice I am willing to recognize as a model of anything (except perhaps a Death Star).

But Jesus was the first pirate. He "copied" bread and fish for tons of people who wanted it. Doesn't that mean that good Christians should advocate sharing and copying, or as you refer to it, "piracy?"

I'd say stealing is taking something that someone already owns away from that. Afterwards, they will no longer have it at all. Or, at least, that's what I think the average person thinks when they hear/read the word.

Of course charging for something diminishes it's value. Just look at open source.

Except that DRM isn't in itself about charging for something. I don't mind paying for a product. I mind very much paying for a product and then having to jump through hoops to get it delivered to me. And then finding that some software that's not needed to use my product but required anyway before the product will allow itself to be used causes problems with other software on my machine. And then finding out that I'm not allo

The main reason for region locking? Have you ever been to south east Asia and took a look at the CD and DVD prices there? Let's put it that way, for the price of a DVD here, you get a pound of DVDs there.

The moment people could buy where they want, you'd instantly see people order abroad, quickly followed by businesses who do the same, import DVDs in SEA and put them on the market for a buck a movie AND make a fortune the same time.

Not excusing a business model that I would call shady at best (e.g. why is i

I live in a country that dubs its shows. Everything on TV is dubbed. And often enough, BADLY dubbed. You do not want to watch Simpsons in my country. The jokes are destroyed, almost invariably. So what I'd want is to watch it in its original language. I speak English well enough to understand what's going on, and besides actually finally getting to understand the jokes, the dubbed voices often sound atrocious at best.